James Thomas Rook Jr.

To the best of my knowledge and belief , based on actual provable facts ( and not flights of fantasy) in modern times Jehovah has not interfered in the lives of ANY Nation, or ANY individual.
He did not save  anyone involved in World War I .. or World War II ..... not as a political nation, not as a religious group, and not as individuals.
...and that's the fact, Jack!
Of course you can disprove my statement with just ONE solid example to the contrary.
I look forward to your correcting me.
.... all it takes is just ONE example to the contrary.
 
 

No - Jehovah allowed it in Mosaic law because the Israelites were so hard hearted.... but Christians had to follow the standard set in Eden. They used this certificate to divorce wives on any small pretext - even leaving older wives for young ones. They abused this provision.
They cut private parts of young girls in our so-called modern society.  The law case against the doctor in USA was thrown out of court.  Thousands of young girls in Africa and even in USA are subjected to this - which makes them vulnerable to all kinds of sicknesses - not to mention the life threat and pain to having sex and child birth. This is happening right now with permission of most governments.
Savagery in war has been with mankind forever.   Some scalped, some shrunk and kept the heads of victims. Less than 400 years ago in Europe they used to hang and quarter people - let their entrails hang out......put their heads on pikes for weeks.  I will not go into the other gruesome things that humans can think up.  In Zaire in 1972 they put barbwire up JWs  backsides and screwed it around so their intestines break up and they die a most painful and slow death..... you want to know about more details?   I can tell you some gruesome things which Africans and also ISIS are still doing in Africa and in the Syria war...... you will not sleep for a week.
So cutting off foreskins as proof of activity after persons were dead and cannot feel pain is merciful.  For more civilized people today this is very distasteful BUT remember this:   the germans were very civilized nation - and look what atrocities they got up to during WW2. The Japannese as well.  Look what people did to each other during hurricane Katrina a few years back..... bring bad situations and peoples true colors come out.   Most people are capable of horrible things when they do not believe that Jehovah can see them.
Jehovah's people are now being prepared for a time of anarchy so they do not participate in this kind of stuff during Armageddon and so keep Jehovah's approval. 
Israel had laws and were not allowed to do certain things in battle which other nations practiced.  They did not flay people and cut off body parts as the assyrians did.  They did not cut off all the fruit trees and stop up water holes etc.  Jehovah did teach them mercy and justice. 
 

It's not that the people back then were so barbaric ... it's just that we today are so pansy-ass wimpy.

Joe knew dirty rotten lowlifes well, to use one of his favorite phrases. “You know that car dealer on TV?” he’d say, speaking of certain commercials. “I know him. He’s a dirty rotten lowlife. I’ve seen him at the auction. He always has a woman in one arm and he holds a drink in the other.” Joe knew dirty rotten lowlifes because he had been dirtier than any of them. When he muscled in on the mob’s territory, the mob came to pay him a visit. He emerged from his shack with a live grenade in each hand! “Now, what is it that you boys wanted?” They suddenly remembered that they really hadn’t wanted anything at all. 
Years later, after Joe had become one of Jehovah’s Witnesses, my son began to sweat when police stopped the car his friend was driving. The two had some fireworks inside—not exactly legal at the time. “Watch this,” the friend said as the policeman approached. The cop asked for his license. “Officer,” the friend asked, ‘“do you know my dad, Joe Markow?” A pause. “This doesn’t say Markow,” the cop said, examining the license. “It says Sanchez.” “Yeah, Joe married my mom. He’s the one who raised me.” This got the officer thinking, and presently he bid my son and friend a good evening and let them go with a friendly admonition to drive safely.
“See that fellow over there?” one cop said to his buddy at the coffee shop, pointing to Joe. “He used to be the meanest SOB around and he turned out better than all of us.”
At a committee meeting over an elder who turned out to be a real stinker and Joe saw it before anyone else—in fact, he spotted it instantly, mostly because he had traveled in the same circles—Joe stated what he had seen and that elder called him a liar. Joe reached across the table and half yanked him out of his chair by the lapels. It was all the other brothers could do to persuade him that “we don’t do it that way here, Joe.” 
“How can you brothers be so naive!?” he said astounded to those ones, who could not believe the evidence unfolding right before their eyes. But after the dust finally settled, one of them approached to say: “You’re right, Joe. We are naive.” Sometimes elders are naive.
He also told off a certain overbearing traveling overseer. His body of elders had worked and worked and had a huge number all pumped up excited during the month over auxiliary pioneering—people that hadn’t done it in ages or even ever. They had rearranged priorities and were all hopped up. The visitor came along and said: “Well, it’s a good start.” “Way to crush the spirit of the congregation,” Joe told him.
Besides my sympathies to the family, his death made me sit up and take notice. It didn’t shake me to the core—that would be too strong to put it that way—but it drew more attention than the deaths of most people for whom I am inclined to pass off as ‘another one bites the dust.’ Sounds callous, I know, but I really am one who believes in the resurrection—death is just the beginning of a long but temporary leave-of-absence and I know that I will not see them for a long while but in most cases I was not seeing them anyway. I have said before that “nobody wants to die—it’s inconvenient and it makes people feel bad,” but other than that—so what? The resurrection will undo it all. Joe’s death was different. 
He really wasn’t that old—maybe just two or three years more than me, I think. He might even have been younger. Your definition of what is ‘old’ increases as you get older yourself. I am of the age where I think that I have 20 good years ahead of me, plenty of time to get everything down in writing. But you never know. Maybe life will throw a me curve ball and I will be gone tomorrow. What is that verse about how we are a mist appearing for a little while and then disappearing? Ah—here it is: James 4:14. “Tell your dad you love him,” Davey-the-Kid said to me after his dad died unexpectedly, for which notice they had paged him at the Pittsburgh Special Assembly.
I have said once or twice—no more than that because I really liked the man—that Joe was the originator of 100 stories, each one of which he was the hero. Ordinarily this would be an extremely tiresome quality, but in Joe it was not—I think because I never doubted (and still don’t) that each and every story was true, unembellished, and he really did act as a hero. One can tell when something has the ring of truth and corresponds with experience and known fact in every conceivable way. Having seen it all, he had turned all his energy and empathy towards the congregation and the ones within it.
I have fond memories of our family camping with his at the campground In upstate New York. The two of us would talk for hours by the campfire and then continue while walking the grounds. Sometimes the most trivial details are the ones that survive. Joe used an expression that I had never heard before (or since). I asked him about it. I found it humorous and thus it became a running joke—“throw one over the hoop.” It means taking a leak, and I suppose it is a reference to slobs too lazy to put the toilet seat up. “I’m off to throw one over the hoop,” we would tell each other throughout the weekend.

More "projection." I enjoy puns, but you are the one playing word games to dodge questions, repeat false claims, use innuendo, avoid explanations, etc.
Actually I offered several items of evidence, which you have ignored and distracted from, so far. Calling that my bluster is "Projection 101."
Evidence of what? You didn't say, except for that one diversion (out of the blue) about Nebuchadnezzar surviving some rough travel itineraries with the help of Nebo/Nabu.
Are you going to point out where I have done this, or should I just expect more bluster?
I had a feeling you might go with bluster!
I see that defensive "echolalia" again, whenever I apparently touch a nerve. I said "sockpuppet" so you worked the word "puppet" into an attempted insult to some COJ-duped professionals. Sounds like you are all upset that actual professionals sided with COJ. Yet again, why are you so obsessed with him? COJ is completely unnecessary to this entire charade of yours.
Feel free to point out anything you wish about COJ, I really don't care. He is (or was?) just one man out of thousands who have access to the same evidence that ends up embarrassing the Watchtower Society on this topic.
No doubt, if history is prologue, you will now show me some "evidence" from a writer/scholar who will somehow show us that the Watchtower is incorrect about the dates the WT gives for the exiles and the destruction of Jerusalem in 607. You will no doubt try to imply that this evidence against the Watchtower is actually evidence that the Watchtower has been correct all along. (And "correct all along" is a very odd choice of words considering the number of times the Watchtower has changed the endpoints and milestones of the chronology.)
Thanks for providing the reference.
As usual, you found another reference that hurts the Watchtower's tradition about 607 and 1914.
First of all, Eric Meyers, the author, of this chapter (10) is expressing appreciation for the findings and work of Peter Ackroyd who wrote "Exile and Restoration" and then later wrote a followup: "Israel under Babylon and Persia." I don't believe you read what he said, or else you must have completely misunderstood it, and only copied it here because he used the familiar range "607 to 537" for the 70 year period mentioned in Jeremiah/Daniel.
Second, when Meyers says that Ackroyd was "prescient" for reflecting on the artificiality of the term exile and restoration, he is asking us to agree with them both in their view that the Bible is wrong. The Bible you might recall says that the land was totally desolate and uninhabited. Ackroyd claimed this was artificial language because "only a portion of the population was exiled." On page 167, the very paragraph following your quote says: ". . .his strong textual sensitivity allowed him to see . . . that  perhaps the text in 2 Kings was in error."
Third, the Watchtower says the exiles were primarily in the two groups taken in 617 and 607. Note that these are the only two Judean exile events mentioned in the Insight book under the article on "EXILE:"
*** it-1 p. 775 Exile ***
Judah. In 617 B.C.E., King Nebuchadnezzar took the royal court and the foremost men of Judah into exile at Babylon. (2Ki 24:11-16) About ten years later, in 607 B.C.E., at the fall of Jerusalem to Babylon, Nebuzaradan, the chief of the Babylonian bodyguard, took most of the remaining ones and deserters of the Jews with him to Babylon, from which exile only a mere remnant returned 70 years later.—2Ki 25:11; Jer 39:9; Isa 10:21, 22; see CAPTIVITY.
A third exile would have been put in 602/601 since Jeremiah indicates it was about 5 years later (23-18=5):
(Jeremiah 52:28-30) . . .These are the people whom Neb·u·chad·nezʹzar took into exile: in the seventh year, 3,023 Jews. 29 In the 18th year of Neb·u·chad·nezʹzar, 832 people were taken from Jerusalem. 30 In the 23rd year of Neb·u·chad·nezʹzar, Neb·uʹzar·adʹan the chief of the guard took Jews into exile, 745 people. In all, 4,600 people were taken into exile. In all, 4,600 people were taken into exile.
So if this source of yours thinks the Watchtower is right, they will include those two exiles in those years: 617 & 607.
If this source thinks that COJ and all current Neo-Babylonian scholars are right, then we'd expect to see: 597 & 587.
Your source, says that there was no simple exile and return, because the exile happened in several pieces (and using the numbers in the Bible, only amounted to a small number of exiles each time). But what are the dates of those various exiles?
He (1970:1) also noted that hardly one date could be assigned to the beginning of the exile (597,587,581 BCE, etc.) let alone a time for the return, which only began in 538–537 BCE.
So, you found a resource that agrees with COJ's dates for the destruction of Jerusalem, and the associated series of exiles. It disagrees with the Watchtower's dates for those events. As usual. In fact the primary difference between COJ and your source is that one of COJ's objectives was to show that the Bible is correct and your source preferred to see the Bible as incorrect in some of the claims about the totality of the exile.
These authors are also telling us that there was no single year that we could point to as the "Return"/"Restoration." They will say it only just started in 538/537, but plenty of evidence shows that it was a trickling of Jews coming back home to Judea over many years, and of course, this also matches some Biblical evidence that shows that many didn't want to leave Babylon at all. We already knew from many Jewish writings that were written in Babylon that healthy Jewish communities lasted for several centuries thereafter.
Your "proof" of the time period merely proves that the Watchtower's chronology is completely wrong. Since you have correctly admitted that 607 was in Nabopolassar's reign, it then follows that Nebuchadnezzar had not even begun his full first year until 604 BCE. So Nebuchadnezzar's 19th year could not be the same as Nabopolassars 18th year. How could he be in the 18th or 19th year of his kingship if he had NOT even started his first year of kingship?
As for the fact that the chapter mentions the familiar range of 70 years, I thought you might go here, which is why I already had mentioned this before your post:
As you probably remember, I have never had any problem with this same range for the 70 years of Jeremiah/Daniel. At most it's only a couple years off, and I've often said on this forum that it may even be correct. After all Jeremiah says that Babylon would be given 70 years of domination as a power over the surrounding nations, and this is a pretty good estimate of the timing of that power. Basically the idea is that the Babylonian world power could be identified as the 70 years between the Assyrian world power and the Medo-Persian world power. I can still admit that the 70 years can be identified with those same years. And if you are admitting the same, then you are also claiming that Jerusalem was destroyed by Babylon about 587/586 BCE.
As I've already said, I was pretty sure you actually agreed already with COJ and thousands of other scholars for the date of Jerusalem's destruction.
I think you've now passed Projection 101, 201, 202, 203, and 301. We can now project that you will graduate with this as your major.

César Chávez:
You are either certifiably insane, or a Democrat Congresswierdo.
...merely my opinion, however.
I believe you would stand in quicksand and deny it, even as you drowned.

Reminds me of when I was a teenager, still living at my parent's home, and I decided to toughen myself up, I would sleep on an Indian Fakir bed of plywood with about a thousand and fifty nails sticking up, but turning over made me wet the bed, and the nails got rusty. and the screaming kept my mother awake.
WHOAAA! .... and talk about trying to get fitted sheets!
....ever try to get twin size fitted sheets with 1,050 correctly spaced buttonholes?

No, you misunderstand. That is Hailstone Massage. It’s the latest craze in health care fads and many of the top Bethelites have gone in for it whole hog.
It is so embarrassing.

I know we are diverging from the tangent to  transition spiral, so just for yuks, I typed into Google "minus 8 pi alpha", and looky what I found!
 

It looked VERY familiar, so I followed the link and VIOLA! ( pronounced WA-LAH!), and here is what popped up.
The whole thing is a .jpg, so you can click on it to either download and frame for your wall, or enlarge to read it better, and wallow in it's intrinsic wisdom, like a pig in mud.

I hoped you meant that "Math is a subject as e to the pi (eπi)." Which, coincidentally, as a function of the number "e" produces a sine of the times. (especially  π times i ) So we've now come full circle back to the topic, and back to square one at the same time. [Get it? "square one"? Because i is the square root of -1]
But the best part of this is that you can resolve it all to eπi = -1 which proves, in effect, that two wrongs can make a right. (Similar to a thing that F.W. "Time Parallels" Franz started to prove in 1944, when he finally accepted the proof that "1 minus -1 = 1" where two eras made an error.) More specifically, it can prove, as Euler did, that two irrationals (e and π) can make a rational (-1). But the devil is in the derivatives, as you implied in an earlier post.
And there has already been a post of unknown derivation that came close to this topic but never touched it.
I know we're just plane around in this space, but diversions are beside the point and that's where I draw the line. 🙄

I tell you what is REALLY incredible !
Thermos Bottles!
I mean .... think about it .....
They keeps hot things hot, and
...they keeps cold things cold!
....how do it KNOW?

How about " Pi are round ... cornbread are square". ?
 

After Russell died, people's reverence for him grew. The Finished Mystery said that he was the "Laodicean Messenger," the angel to the congregation of Laodicea in Revelation 3. The book said each church messenger or angel was someone god sent to bring a message to the church in a particular time period. I think John was on the list, as was Wycliff and Martin Luther.
Basically, he was being elevated. There was an advertisement in a WT from like 1916 or 1917 for people to get pictures of Russell to hang in their homes or in the buildings in which they met to worship.
Some brothers tried to mimic his dress and style, trying to act reserved and genteel. Their clothes were somber and in muted colors.
The org calls this creature worship.
So Rutherford wrote an article in like 23 called "character or covenant- which?" Basically criticizing this stuff as being creature worship and that it was an outward show of piety, rather than being active in the newly pushed ministry under an appointed service director.
Rutherford was a dick and want to redirect all attention to himself. So beginning in 1919 (with both the Golden Age and the Harp of God) he began to "write" (likely Franz did most of it) books to replace the studies in the scriptures. These were the rainbow series (for all the colors each book came in. Not because it was LGBTQ friendly 😉). Bit by bit, he had every vestige of attention that had been directed toward Russell directed toward him as the head of the organization. Interestingly enough, by 1930 a sizable amount of Russell's followers had left the organization, including one of the men who went to jail with Rutherford in 1918. The org had changed too much for them.
It was likely at this time that the cultural ban on beards began.
Who was the prison buddy who left?
So I knew it was Fisher from when I did research in this maybe 8 years ago. In searching for my source, I found this.
The source is The Herald magazine, which I believe was publisher by the Bible Students. For the most part, it seems fairly accurate.
Fisher urged German congregations to disfellowship Rutherford in 1926. Date is interesting because in 1925, The Birth of the Kingdom article was published, completely rejecting Russell's view of Revelation 12 (as compiled by Fisher and Woodworth in The Finished Mystery) that the woman was the Catholic church and the child was the Pope's peace plan. The article said it was the kingdom and moved its birth from 1874 to 1914. (My opinion is this was a Franz article, beginning his role as the oracle.) Given Fisher cowrote the book, it seems likely he took issue with all these new changes.
It seems that Robison also left the Watchtower though I don't know the circumstances.
Woodworth stayed on as editor of the Golden Age (with its quackery and psuedoscience.)
All the other stuff I have the references to as well, if you'd like. I extracted all those articles I referred to (16, 23) from digital copies of the volumes. Had spent a few weeks going through the volumes from 79 to 49 and found them (and other gems.)
The character or covenant mimicry of Russell is mentioned in the JV book. The replacing of Russell era books and teachings is STILL THE LATEST understanding of the 1335 days of the last verse in Daniel 12. That era (22-26) was evidently important enough to have been foretold 2500 years ago 🙄🤮 The Daniel book gives a brief outline of that explanation. and hasn't been replaced with any "new light".
Rutherford was a colossal dick and wanted to erase Russell from the picture. In that context, the beard thing makes sense.
- Sigh2Sigh

You can put make-up on a pig, but its still a pig.

Seeing that dog fingering the trigger gives me paws

How large is the library in your town? Have you ever been there?
I’m not so sure. There is little sign of it here.
I didn’t either. And with some, I will rise to the occasion and try to figure it out. But with the ol pork chop I cannot even be sure that there is an occasion so I rest from my labors

How large is the library in your town? Have you ever been there?
I’m not so sure. There is little sign of it here.
I didn’t either. And with some, I will rise to the occasion and try to figure it out. But with the ol pork chop I cannot even be sure that there is an occasion so I rest from my labors

Someone bought me a big chrome and red NO BLOOD square metal 'block' that is supposed to be a key ring. It looks like an un-lucky charm. It actually has the picture of a bag of blood with the line across it. It's horrid and i would never use it. I cannot imagine getting in one of my cars with that hanging on the keys. Yuk. 

I don't know ANYBODY, anywhere, in any religion, that is not a Star Wars Fan.
I like the first episode out (actually episode 3 in the series), that introduced the series, with that rolling episode opening.
It is with that first movie I began to appreciate Cinnebons, and canister vacuum cleaners
 

The burning question on MOST peoples' minds is:
If all four windows in the house face South .... what color is the Bear ?

Entirely believable, JWI, as I have seen stuff like that and worse ....
I am a Barbarian, and my record is better than theirs for understanding what scriptures really mean, as their understanding is policy and agenda driven, and they can enforce under penalty of disfellowshipping any crazy nonsense a normal person would immediately see as nonsense.
 

You may, therefore, beat yourself with whips in lamentation.
.... don't overdo it!

You may, therefore, beat yourself with whips in lamentation.
.... don't overdo it!

You must forgive me on this, but the more I think about this remark, the dumber it appears.
As already stated, if he was so obsessed about leaving a positive note on the end, he would not have supplied his negative note at the beginning. 
It gets dumber. It is not just a fact that he has offered in your eyes— it is a FACT! But his opinion? Obviously he doesn’t know what he is talking about and he may even be lying. Yet when it comes to chronology you are like a child at his feet, lapping up every word—never doubting for a second his judgement, even while admitting it is over your head because you don’t really dig into things.
His grasp of Witness lore and governance is so unequaled that his opinion might be more of a fact than his FACT. I don’t doubt what he says, but the point is to you he is just an uncorroborated single witness. People are notoriously unreliable in relating even their own experiences, where emotion can easily taint memory. There are people who stumble over the trees, but their grasp of the forest is unhindered. There is nothing but your own prejudice to say it is not that way here.
You are sort of a screwball who appears to assume that the very purpose of this site is to supply you with dirt on the faith that you were once a part of and now can’t see a single point that is upright—to the point where, if fresh dirt is not supplied, you chide participants here for not adding anything of “value.” You are like the antitypical nutty farmer diligently cultivating weeds, ripping out any wheat that raises its nasty head since that is NOT what you are looking to harvest.

I would not call it “dumb” if I were you.
The four windows reminds us of the four angels on the four corners of the earth holding tight the four winds of the earth. The carpet covering the dirt of the floor reminds up of the love that is to cover the sins of others. The blue reminds us of heaven where those 4 angels hang out on a nice day.
”You were running well. Who hindered you from keeping on obeying the truth?”